Calendar for March 11th, 2014

Johnny Appleseed Day

Celebrating John Chapman, legendary American pioneer and folk hero who planted apple trees across the American Frontier. Chapman was born in Massachusetts, September 26, 1774, but Johnny Appleseed Day is celebrated on March 11th.

Chapman earned his nickname because he planted small orchards and individual apple trees during his travels as he walked across 100,000 square miles of Midwestern wilderness and prairie. He was a genuine and dedicated professional nurseryman, known for his generous nature, his love of the wilderness, his devotion to the Bible, his knowledge of medicinal herbs, his harmony with the Indians, and his eccentric nature, too. Next time you bite into an apple, think of "Johnny Appleseed."

1660s

1669: A deadly Mt. Etna eruption began in Italy

1730s

Born 1731: Robert Treat Paine (public official)

1810s

Born 1811: Urbain Le Verrier (astronomer)

1820s

1824: The Bureau of Indian Affairs was created in the U.S. War Department

1860s

Born 1860: Thomas Hastings (co-architect of N.Y. Public Library)

1890s

Born 1890: Vannevar Bush (electrical engineer)

1892: First public game of basketball played, Springfield, Massachusetts

Born 1897: Henry Dixon Cowell (composer)

Born 1898: Dorothy Gish (actress)

1900s

Born 1903: Lawrence Welk (bandleader)

1910s

Born 1919: Mercer Ellington (musician)

1920s

Born 1926: Ralph Abernathy (civil rights leader)

1930s

Born 1934: Sam Donaldson (broadcast journalist)

1935: The Bank of Canada opened as a privately owned and government-controlled corporation

Born 1936: Antonin Scalia (Supreme Court justice)

1940s

1941: Congress maintained U.S. neutrality in the war in Europe but passed the Lend-Lease Act, which enabled England to borrow aircraft, weapons, and merchant ships

1945: Naval Unit Commendation awarded to light cruiser U.S.S. Helena

1950s

Born 1952: Douglas Noel Adams (author)

Died 1955: Oscar Mayer (manufacturer)

1959: Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun, opened in New York. It was the first play by an African American woman to appear on Broadway

1960s

1960: Pioneer V, U.S. planetoid, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, into orbit around the sun

1967: Florida panther was added to the endangered species list

Born 1968: Lisa Loeb (musician)

Born 1969: Terrence Howard (actor)

1970s

Died 1971: Philo T. Farnsworth (inventor)

Born 1979: Joel & Benji Madden (musicians)

1980s

1982: U.S. Senator Harrison Williams resigned his Senate seat as a result of being charged with misconduct

Born 1982: Thora Birch (actress)

1985: Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen to succeed Chernenko as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party

1988: Former National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane pleaded guilty to withholding information from Congress during Iran-Contra affair

2000s

Died 2002: James Tobin (Yale economist and Nobel Prize winner)

2010s

2011: A magnitude-9.0 earthquake devastated Japan and spawned a 23-foot tsunami. The quake moved Japan 8 feet to the east.

Died 2011: Frank Neuhauser (in 1925 won the first U.S. national spelling bee with the word "gladiolus")